George Thompson, Public Commercial Services SEC candidate (personal capacity) JOBCENTRE workers are facing increasing austerity attacks from the New Labour government, with diminishing resistance from union leaders in the newlymerged Public Commercial Services union (PCS).
The rightward shift of the Party-influenced PCS Section Executive has led to it recommending a derisory pay offer, The positions supporting the adopted by Socialist New Deal, and Party supporters and agreeing to the introduction of their allies in the ES in youth trainees relation to New Deal into the contradict Left Unity Employment Service (ES) on policy pitiful wages.
Such policies have led to a break-up of ES Left Unity. Now the Socialist Caucus, a principled part of the former bloc, has decided to mount an electoral challenge to the Socialist Party and its allies for the SEC.
Although the split in the left vote risks allowing the Blairite "Moderates" to gain control of the Section Executive (SEC), many members are asking if they could be any worse than the current leaders.
The pay deal accepted by the present SEC was one of the poorest in the Civil Service, and was an embarrassment to other Left Unity PCS Section Executives.
The Benefits Agency SEC, controlled by Left Unity, rejected a similar management offer.
The deal did not come close to a set of minimum demands previously promoted by the SEC as the least members should accept.
They claimed they supported it because there was no mood amongst members for a fight, but this was not reflected at workplace meetings.
In organisational terms the PCS RNETT has seen a massive membership decline in the ES in recent years. The London region, dominated of the few areas to retain its strength. However the 'left led' SEC ran an invisible campaign against the Jobseekers Allowance, and has supported New Deal.
By contrast Socialist Caucus has always argued it was opposed in principle to a scheme which is compulsory to the unemployed and allows the private sector to poach ES jobs. Another major difference between Caucus and the SEC has been National Traineeships (New replacement to YTS). The SEC has signed an agreement with management to allow 400 National trainees to work in the ES for £75 per week for between six months and two years.
The Socialist Party itself carried a front page article in their newspaper (Socialist No. 75) unwittingly abusing their own leaders in the PCS for endorsing a youth 'slave labour scheme. However later they retracted this article and tried to defend the indefensible.
The positions adopted by Socialist Party supporters and their allies in the ES in relation to New Deal and youth trainees are in contradiction to Left Unity policy, and it beggars belief that they may stand as Left Unity candidates in new elections.
Caucus has every intention of trying to win the elections and building a real fightback to the government's onslaught. Such a victory would not only benefit the sectional interests of Civil Servants, but the unemployed and the working class as a whole.
Vote Socialist Caucus! Get your copy! Closure of Guy's Hospital's A&E is the latest example of New Labour's line John Lister CHAUCERIAN characters will again be walking the streets of central London in the week from September 14, as campaigners from the Kent and Canterbury Hospital dress up to make their case against its closure. A contingent of protestors, dressed as characters from Geoffrey Chaucer's I4th century Canterbury Tales will be picketing the Department of Health in Whitehall and the House of Commons, handing out leaflets and information on the impact of the planned cutbacks.
They have urged other hospital campaigners to join in, though not every threatened hospital has the literary links of the Kent & Canterbury. Meanwhile the pressure is being maintained by campaigners in Oxfordshire - where the Community Health Council has formally opposed cuts in community hospital beds, forcing health ministers to take the final decision, and in Worcestershire, where the fight against closure of Kidderminster Hospital is poised for a new stage.
Campaigners and the Community Health Council in the Wyre Forest district around Kidderminster are taking Worcestershire Health Authority to court later this month, demanding a judicial review of their decision to press ahead with closures that would axe 37% of beds in the county.
In West Hertfordshire, UNISON and local campaign groups in Watford and in Hemel Hempstead are strongly resisting a plan to axe services and reduce the district to just one general hospital.
And in leafy Northwood in north west London, David Panter, the beleagured chief executive of Hillingdon Health Authority has been panting hard. He has had to resort to the use of bouncers and bodyguards to protect him against the anger of local campaigners opposing HA plans to axe most inpatient services at Mount Vernon Hospital. Among the services at risk is Mount Vernon's specialist plastic surgery and burns unit: its closure would leave just one unit - based at the traffic-clogged Chelsea and Westminster hospital on the Fulham Road, with no helicopter access - to cover a population of 5 million people in and around west London.
So strong is the local feeling against the cuts that crowds of up to 2,000 turned out to one of the HA's consultation meetings, with police adopting riot control tactics to contain the pensioners and local residents.
Despite Frank Dobson's recent claim to have halted the run-down of acute hospital beds, these and other cuts are being pushed through by health bosses across the country, driven in part by Gordon Brown's tight-fisted 3-year settlement for the NHS.
With health workers angered by an indefinite limit to their pay, and huge shortages developing of qualified nursing and professional staff, there is every chance that the level of activity will conținue to increase.
mance of privatised rail compa-